Over 1/3 new graduates still job-hunting: survey

TAIPEI -- About 35 percent of people who graduated from a university within the last three months are still looking for a job, according to the results of an online job bank survey.

The poll, conducted by the 104 Job Bank from Oct. 1 to Oct. 16, found that about 54 percent of the new graduates polled had found a job, up 4 percentage points from a year earlier, while 35 percent said they were still looking for work.

About 22 percent of respondents said they had already quit or changed their job. Of this group, one quarter said they quit because the job they were given differed from how they imagined it, and 21 percent said their pay was lower than expected.

The survey collected 1,527 valid samples from job seekers on their database, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.51 percentage points.

Meanwhile, some 394,000 job openings were registered with the manpower agency in October, down 4.3 percent from the previous month, according to 104 Job Bank.

Another job broker, 1111 Job Bank, said the number of full-time openings posted on its website in September fell from the year-earlier level for the 13th consecutive month.

1111 Job Bank Deputy General Manager Henry Ho said job hunters will likely have to wait until after the Lunar New Year holiday, which begins on Feb. 9, 2013, for companies to advertise more job openings.

According to the latest data from the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), Taiwan's unemployment rate in September fell by 0.08 percentage points from a month earlier to 4.32 percent after hitting a high for 2012 in August.

The seasonally adjusted rate in September told a different story, however, rising 0.01 percentage points from August to 4.3 percent, the highest it has been since November 2011, the DGBAS said.